626 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(05/05/11 4:01am)
Maxine Atkins Smith, civil rights activist
She knew Martin Luther King, Jr. when they were both undergraduates and she was with him on the night that he was assassinated. But if you ask Maxine Atkins Smith about the Middlebury portion of her college years, the first thing that comes to mind is, “It was cold.” Just 19 years old with a fresh college diploma in hand from Spelman College, Smith came to Vermont to attend language school in 1949, and completed a Masters in French from Middlebury in 1951. An honorary degree recipient for Middlebury’s upcoming 2011 Commencement, Smith was previously awarded with an outstanding alumnae award from the College.
Smith is best known for her career as a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) civil rights activist, which spans the earliest rumblings of the Civil Rights Movement to the present. Throughout all she has been a champion for education, with 24 years of service to the Memphis Board of Education. Until a friend encouraged her to run for a seat on the board, Smith “had never been interested in politics on the individual level, but thought of this as education,” as something different. Before Smith the school board had never had a black member, yet despite the fact that only one-third of the voting public was Black, Smith was elected.
Smith was present at all the major movements in the Civil Rights Movement, but it is something that she only lightly takes credit for.
“I’m blessed to have been born when I was born and in the thrust of all the movements of the 50s and the 60s and to be put in a place to do something about those issues,” said Smith. “I got so much more from the movement than I had to give. When I came out of Spelman and Middlebury I was not yet wise to the ways of the world, but both liberal arts educations had taught me about living.”
When she graduated from Spelman with a degree in biology, an interest in dentistry and the love of languages that led her to Middlebury, activism had yet to show itself as part of Smith’s journey. However, if you look carefully enough, you can see earlier moments of revolutionary dissent. Smith’s first experience with racism came when she was eight years old and was reprimanded by a White hospital worker for addressing her father by the term mister when she asked to be shown to his room. During that era blacks were not privileged to salutations.
When prompted, Smith will rattle off stories of every year of her life in perfect chronological fashion. In 1951 she graduated from Middlebury and began teaching French at black colleges in the South. In 1953 she married and continued teaching until 1955. In 1956 she gave birth to her only son. And it was not until 1957 that her work with the NAACP fell into her lap. At that time Smith already held a Masters from Middlebury, but a dear friend who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley encouraged her to return to school with her at the University of Memphis. They were both rejected.
“We were not good enough for Memphis and that was solely based on race,” said Smith.
That news went public and the next thing Smith knew, the NAACP had called the two young women to serve on their board. She joined as a volunteer.
“I think they asked us because really they needed some rejuvenating and they didn’t have any women on the board. The NAACP was a group of old men and it was a solid passion developed from me to them. I saw the passion in their eyes and I was honored to sit at their feet and feel their thirst. I couldn’t get away from it,” said Smith. “I’m very hands on, you could say. I never got away from the NACCP until I retired in 1996 and I’m still not truly away from it.”
Smith’s first project with the NACCP was to boost black voter registration in Memphis and greater Shelby County. When she began fewer than 10,000 blacks were registered to vote there. She brought that number to over 50,000 in the next couple of years. Throughout 1960 and 1961 she coordinated sit-ins and boycotts. During the summer of 1961 the NAACP got its first 13 black students into first grade classes in Memphis’ formerly white-only public schools. Each day, she literally took three of those students to their school and walked them into their classrooms and picked them up at the end of the day, supported by a police chief whom she credits with “protecting those children though he did not believe in desegregation.”
In 1962 she became the executive secretary of the NAACP and in the coming years helped to “bring Memphis to its feet and change state laws. [By the end of the decade,] we had broken down the legal barriers of segregation.”
Last year the University of Memphis finally accepted Smith by awarding her an honorary degree.
“I had no malice in my heart because I can joke about it now,” she quipped.
When accepting the award Smith “jovially told them that it took me 57 years to get this degree. I’m not quite that bad of a student.”
She sees the award as a measure of progress. Ironically, she had long since overseen the establishment in an institutional capacity through her work with the county’s education board.
“It takes a different sort of push from the individual to make things better for not only himself but also for the world. They have to look at the society they live in, not only at home,” said Smith. “You have to have compassion for others. There remain a lot of less-fortunates in our world. It’s not hard to find. We just need to be aware of the needs that surround us, locally, nationwide and worldwide and make it a point to do something.
“We have to make the very best with what we have. We still have a lot of inequities in our country. Whatever area, at whatever level — we need some of you to go rid our world of problems that are man-made, because those are the only ones that we can fix,” continued Smith. “We come from different worlds, but we’re still all people and we all have an obligation to repay a little bit of our rent in this universe that we haven’t paid.”
Smith says she paid her dues by fighting for equal access to education and civil rights for all, but she encourages every student to find a way to do something that fits with their talents and ideals. “Do something for somebody to the best of your individual ability,” she said. “Your gift may be different than your neighbor’s but we all have a gift. Use yours to heal the harm that still exists."
Chris Waddell ’91, paralympian and philantrohpist
Sometimes, life does not go the way we plan. Sometimes, the universe throws us a curve ball. But that does not mean we have to give up what we love, give up on our dreams. There is no better example than Chris Waddell ’91.
In 1987, Waddell entered Middlebury as a first-year on the Division I ski team.
“Obviously I wanted a good school,” said Waddell. “But I also wanted the ability to ski Division I. Skiing is sort of my first love.”
Waddell has been skiing for as long as he can remember.
“I grew up in New England and have a lot of energy, and I just wanted to ski,” said Waddell, “There are pictures of me and our family dog outside in the front yard and I’m skiing. I don’t remember any of it, but my parents said I wanted to do it. And it was freezing cold out and that didn’t seem to bother me.”
He never lost that passion for the winter sport, even after tragedy occurred.
It was the first day of Christmas break of Waddell’s sophomore year at Middlebury. Waddell was skiing with his brother at his home mountain preparing for that day’s training.
“I wasn’t going very fast,” said Waddell. “I wasn’t doing anything very interesting.”
But there was the unexpected turn of events: Waddell fell and his ski popped off in an unconventional manner. He broke his back, making him a paraplegic and putting him in a wheelchair. One would think such a horrible disaster would put an end to Waddell’s skiing career, but that was not the case.
“I started to ski again two days short of a year during the middle of exams,” said Waddell. “I started skiing for the first time again at the Snow Bowl. Friends of Middlebury Skiing actually bought my first monoski.”
Waddell continued to be a part of the Middlebury Ski team through his senior year when he was captain.
After Middlebury, Waddell went on to compete for 15 years in both alpine skiing and wheelchair racing, joining the U.S. Paralympic team, where he found great success. After competing in seven Olympic games — four winter and three summer — Waddell became the most decorated male Paralympic skier, winning 12 medals in his four winter games.
Now, Waddell has concentrated his efforts on running his foundation, One Revolution.
“We want to turn the way the world sees people with disabilities by approaching it from a very universal way,” said Waddell. “Show them we’re more similar than different. We’re aiming at maintaining a quality of life.
“Our opportunity and talent is in trying to change public perception,” Waddell continued. “I feel that there’s a lot of presumptions [about the disabled] that persist as presumptions, and if they persist long enough they become fact. I want to be able to present stories in such a way so people don’t see the person on the screen as different, but see themselves different. The idea is that hopefully we get closer and closer.”
One Revolution attempts to alter public perception in two ways. One is through videos that show how disabled persons can become accomplished despite their difficulties.
What better story than Waddell’s own? In addition to his skiing achievements, in 2009 Waddell became the first paraplegic to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro unassisted. Waddell has just finished a documentary on his climb, One Revolution; its tagline is as follows: “It’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.”
The second is through an educational program called “Nametags,” which addresses social labels.
“How much of our time at school do we spend trying to fit in?” asked Waddell. “It’s a risk we run in missing out on the thing we do really well, our potential genius, by trying to be like everyone else.”
Possibly the reason Waddell believes so strongly in a strong school community is because of his experience at Middlebury.
“I had my skiing accident when I was at Midd and came back in a chair the spring of my sophomore year,” said Waddell. “Ultimately the transition was significantly easier than it should have been because of the way the school conducted itself. The school pretty much took a vast campus on the top of a hill and made it accessible which is pretty amazing.
“Some of what I didn’t know at that point was I was a freshman in college and I didn’t think I mattered to the school and it would have been very easy for them to say that this isn’t an accessible school, and they didn’t. They said, ‘You’re part of our family,’ and that was really amazing for me.”
After his accident Waddell received support from both students and faculty.
“There was a huge outpouring of the community which made it really easy for me,” said Waddell. “What the school didn’t do my friends did. I had a great time at Midd and still have great friends from there, members of faculty, deans and obviously classmates.”
Now, 20 years after graduating, Middlebury is reaching out to Waddell once again. He will not only receive an honorary degree, but will also be this year’s commencement speaker. When asked how he felt about being given this position, Waddell responded: “Honored, humbled, and a little bit nervous.”
Edward Rubin, geneticist
Edward Rubin does not have a long commute to work. From his home in Berkley, Calif., he simply rides his bike up a hill to his job: his laboratory.
Rubin is a geneticist whose lab works on the well-known Human Genome Project, sequencing the genomes not only of humans but now of plants, microbes and animals that have relevance to energy and greenhouse gasses.
“We are interested in organisms that take CO2 out of the atmosphere,” said Rubin. “There are plants and microbes that live in the ocean that are very efficient.
“My background was as a human geneticist taking care of patients with genetic diseases,” said Rubin. “Those are people who have freaky mutations in their DNA that leads to diseases. Then I became involved in the Human Genome Project.”
Rubin always had a passion for science. He attended UC San Diego to study physics.
“[But] then I took a course, Bio for Physicists, when I was a college student,” said Rubin. “I had a charismatic professor and became interested in DNA and was really fascinated by it. And it’s continued through my scientific career. […] It’s a bit like joining the mob, joining the mafia. I got hooked by DNA when I was a college student and that hook never came out. I sort of had a passion for DNA which I never lost.”
Although Rubin did not attend Middlebury, he is still connected with the College. Rubin will receive his Middlebury honorary degree at this year’s graduation as his son, Ben Rubin ’11, receives his own Middlebury diploma.
“I like to be able to make fun of Ben,” said Rubin. “He worked so hard over four years, and all I had to do was show up and get my degree.”
Rubin also has a daughter, Rachel, who is currently getting a graduate degree in public policy and public relations at George Washington University.
“I think Middlebury’s a great place,” said Rubin. “It’s a wonderful place to study science, as well as learn languages, and I did visit and give a lecture and I was enormously impressed by the quality of the faculty and their commitment to training the next generation of scientists.
“I went to a big university,” continued Rubin. “I’m jealous of the science education that Ben got at Middlebury. It’s much more. The teachers cared much more about his education.”
Size was not really a consideration in Rubin’s college search. In fact, he admits that it was really one thing that drew him to UC San Diego.
“I went to UC San Diego purely because I was interested in surfing,” said Rubin. “I grew up in New York City and I learned how to surf, and I read a surfing magazine that talked about the beaches in San Diego. I went to surf. My parents thought I was lost.”
And just as his passion for DNA has stayed with him through the years, he has never lost his love for catching a good wave.
“I’m an avid surfer,” said Rubin. “I surf a lot, I take lots of surfing trips. I surf a couple days a week.”
(05/05/11 4:01am)
On a misty April afternoon, a class of 14 Middlebury students, dressed in hiking gear and carrying day packs, are spread out in groups of two or three throught a forest. It looks similar to most forests, except for the fact that most trees are so large that you cannot get your arms around them; they dwarf the trees commonly seen on the Middlebury campus. Members of each group are kneeling on the forest floor, using compasses to create North-South transects, or lines of yellow measuring tape to study the sunlight patterns in the canopy. It is quiet, except for the sound of measurements being called out and the occasional question posed to Assistant Professor of Biology Andrea Lloyd, who is monitoring the proceedings, about what type of younger trees they are identifying. In this “Plant Community Ecology” biology class, as part of labs students had the chance to explore one of Middlebury’s lesser-known properties (at least to those not involved in the natural sciences): Battell Research Forest — one of the oldest and the largest forest of its type in Vermont.
“It’s extremely rare to find an old-growth forest,” said Plant Community and Ecology student Ford Van Fossan ’13,
A forest categorized as “old growth,” meaning it has never been logged, is the perfect place to conduct research on lots of very old trees. Given this trait, the forest’s, “primary function is research and education,” said Lloyd.
Old growth forests are useful for research because they can host different varieties of plants and animals than other types of forests.
“It’s a very different setting than a new forest,” said Plant Community and Ecology student Avery Shawler ’13. “It’s a completely different habitat.”
According to a research paper published on Fire History and Tree Recruitment by a former professor at the University of Vermont (UVM), another benefit of uncut forests is the fact that “uncut forests provide a rare opportunity to discern the natural dynamics of vegetation in a landscape otherwise dominated by human disturbance.”
In addition to taking her plant ecology class to the forest for labs, Lloyd teaches a senior seminar where students conduct research for their theses. Recent work has focused on forest succession, which looks at the changes in a forest over time. A thesis by Emerson Tuttle ’10 studied the two species of flying squirrels that live in Vermont — one of the few places where the two species overlap.
Researchers outside of Middlebury also utilize the grounds; a professor at UVM studied the trees, and a graduate student at UVM plans to do some work with wildlife biology starting in the summer.
Joseph Battell, who was the largest landowner in Vermont upon his death, intended all of his donated land to be untouched. In 1911, he gave the state of Vermont its first tract of public land: 1,200 acres, including today’s research forest, which he intended to dedicate to nature preservation and restoration. It was the first tract of land of its type. Four years later, Battell bequeathed over 30,000 acres of mountain forests in trust forests as “wild lands.” However, although some areas, like the research forest, remain preserved, some of the acreage under the management of the Green Mountain National Forest has been logged, developed for ski areas and clear cut, a practice in which all trees, regardless of type, are cut down.
One of the reasons the Battell Research Forest may have escaped this fate initially was purely practical.
“Really this forest is lucky because it’s on such a steep slope, which is one of the reasons it wasn’t logged,” said Shawler. “It’s very steep and rocky.”
In addition, the College decided to continue the status quo in 1999 by committing to maintain its own segment of Battell’s forest as pristine when a group of Environmental Studies students pushed for a resolution. The resolution promised:
“[The] undeveloped lands within the Bread Loaf Campus area […] pursuant to the Last Will and Testament of Joseph Battell be preserved and protected.”
This kind of commitment to the College forests means quite a bit of land is protected. Associate in Science Instruction in Environmental Studies Marc Lapin recently completed an evaluation of College lands which concluded that 884 of the 2,918 acres of college-owned mountain lands are forested.
The forest, composed mostly of hemlock trees, also hosts a small population of red pine, which is what Lloyd’s Plant Community and biology class is studying. Although the forest used to be under a fire regimen until about 150 years ago, the end of these regular, natural fires due to human interference meant that the red pine population declined precipitously. Now, instead of a hemlock and red pine forest “it’s hemlock and white pine, and a kind of trivial population of red pine,” said Van Fossan.
After gathering data about tree diameters over large swaths of land, the class will construct a matrix involving tree growth rates and life expectancies to predict the future of the red pine population. Ultimately, they will find out “whether the population is doomed or whether it will persist,” said Van Fossan.
The forest affords students dealing with the wilderness the opportunity to engage in more practical and real-world research projects.
“It’s a significant field research project that will produce real and tangible results,” Van Fossan said. “It’s the most serious research project I’ve ever done in a natural science setting.”
Lloyd’s senior seminar is studying land management practices of the College in how they relate to our goal of carbon neutrality by 2016. They monitored carbon uptake in the forest, and proposed ideas for “how to implement an ongoing carbon monitoring protocol on College-owned forest lands,” according to the project’s MiddLab webpage.
With the copious amount of research focused on the forest, it might seem intuitive that the forest would be more on the radar of Middlebury students.
When asked whether he thinks more students should know more about the forest, Van Fossan replied, “I think so, but that’s because I like trees,” continuing, “I think it’s really cool. You don’t really get places like that too often in the world, or at least in the Eastern United States.”
In the end, although much of Battell’s forestland has not been dealt with in the manner in which Battell intended, the research forest, at least, fulfills his goal. Battel wrote, in Father Went to College: The Story of Middlebury:
“Some folks pay $10,000 for a painting and hang it on the wall where their friends can see it, while I buy a whole mountain for that much money and it is hung up by nature where everybody can see it and it is infinitely more handsome than any picture ever painted.”
(05/05/11 3:58am)
Amidst talk of plummeting profits and financial instability, 51 Main played host to an event last Thursday, April 28, that transcended any monetary value. The gathering of students, faculty and community members was warm and lively, and the space was brimming with faces, all brought together to hear Catarina Campbell ’11 perform poetry and play host. The evening was not widely advertised, and as a result, fostered an intimate atmosphere: the students were largely from the class of soon-to-be graduating seniors, and the faculty in attendance were personally involved with poetry. This gave a bittersweet air to proceedings, as the sense of the senior’s upcoming departure was palpable in the bustling space.
Far from the typical image of a soft-spoken, paper-shuffling poet, Campbell performed a series of animated spoken word poems for a little under an hour, with interjections, performances, anecdotes and readings from her friends and colleagues along the way.
“It was my dream senior project,” Campbell said, reminiscing on the event, “and I envisioned it originally as an excuse to have a lot of members of my Middlebury family and community come together at one time. I have used spoken word as a way to write myself through things and to write my way into new identities. I wanted to have a chance to read things I’ve written from freshman to senior year; when I perform a poem, for those moments spent reading, I am back in the emotional space I was in when I wrote it. It was a really liberating and validating feeling to be able to embody so much of what I experienced in four years by performing so many of my poems in one night.”
Campbell also stated at the beginning of the evening that her mission was to explore “spoken word as a medium” as “a way to build community.” With tightly packed bodies crouched on the floor and squeezed into every space available, this goal was achieved before a single poem had been spoken. Campbell had asked her acquaintances to share poems, quotes and stories between her own readings, making the overall performance collaborative and communal.
The poems themselves touched upon issues that the College community also grapples with — identity, hook-up culture and gender were among the topics. Between the politics and personal memories, Campbell’s use of language shone; pithy, declarative, observant and most of all memorable, she declared at one point to be starting a “four-foot-ten, brown and boobless revolution” on stage. Her supporting acts from friends were likewise memorable and charming: a retelling of Dr. Seuss’ Oh The Places We’ll Go, poetry from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, study abroad anecdotes and personal stories about their relationship with Campbell.
Although the audience came down to 51 Main to hear poetry, it was clear that many people were also there as a marker of friendship, as a way of remembering the times they shared with Campbell. The performances given by Campbell and her compatriots were also a reminder that, as we all approach the manic end of the semester, college is about more than the GPA and the BA you get at the end of it; it’s about the friendships and close bonds you build along the way.
(05/05/11 3:56am)
This is my last Reel Critic column for the Campus. It is difficult for me to believe that there is anything more enjoyable than writing about film, as fun as it would be to be embedded in Afghanistan with the Navy Seals (a onetime dream of mine). As I look back on what I’ve written, I recall the pleasure that I derive from the movies. “Prepare to exit disappointed and deeply pessimistic about love,” I wrote about Blue Valentine, and about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, I raved, “Her character might have been more likeable had Mia Wasikowska, who plays her, not looked as if she was consumptive throughout the film.”
I kid, but an informal survey of the films I’ve watched over the past few years does betray a depressing truth. More often than not, the movies that we grant the most attention to, willingly or unwillingly, are not just bad, but laughable, to the point where you wonder if the producers were conducting a social experiment on humankind to see what people would pay around $12 to see — for example, Fast Five (the fifth installment in the Fast and the Furious franchise), Hop, an animated film about talking Easter bunnies, Gnomeo and Juliet — I don’t even know — and Never Say Never, the Justin Bieber documentary. Incidentally, this is a list compiled from the past two months’ box office No. Ones. I did pick the most egregious examples, but what I left off wasn’t particularly impressive. I’m looking at you, ensemble romantic comedies.
Reviewers and serious, well-intentioned and sometimes overbearing cinephiles (I include myself among the latter) have been complaining about the decaying state of cinema for decades, from the days of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut — who took it upon themselves to create good cinema, practicing what they preached — to the forlorn A.O. Scott and friends today. And yet, short of upending capitalism, which I have to say would probably be a net loss for the film industry, what else is there to do but what we do best: criticize. As Scott once tweeted (making this the second time I have quoted Twitter in an article — see you in the afterlife, print media), “Onward. There are movies out there that need reviewing! Bad ideas that need refuting. Criticism is not a job. It’s a way of life.” While I am far too cynical to believe that a combination of sharp analysis, clever quips and some good old-fashioned shaming would be enough to reform the tastes of the movie-going public, I do think it has the power to function as its own form of entertainment and, occasionally, edification.
Despite my curmudgeonly attitude, there are things to look forward to in cinema, and not just as objects of ridicule. Great directors and writers such as the Coen brothers, Aaron Sorkin, Charlie Kaufman and others continue to produce consistently fresh and interesting work. I expect exciting things from new filmmakers — Tom Ford, Derek Cianfrance — and old, such as Scorcese, Almodovar and Polanski. Terrence Malick’s latest film in six years, The Tree of Life, comes out this year; Tarantino has a Western going into production, and I will admit every year I hold out hope that the new Woody Allen film will contain some of the discreet offensiveness of the bourgeoisie that made him great. Finally, there is always the promise of new and undiscovered talent, as well as those two Osama bin Laden films that have already been greenlit.
Even if my current state of unemployment becomes permanent, I intend to comment on films as if it were my job, a quality I’m sure my parents will continue to find adorable. I will gladly deal with the occasional disappointment or fury — the latter is in specific reference to Sofia Coppola — by channeling it into a discussion, on paper or in person, with others who invest questionable amounts of time into arguing about that sort of thing (often on the internet). Speaking of which, my co-writer and friend Brad Becker-Parton will carry on the tradition of fine commentary, peppered with snarky asides, in these pages for another semester. Brad, after all, is the thinking man’s Jesse Eisenberg.
And, if cinema completely fails us, there is still a modicum of hope — television is pretty good these days.
(04/21/11 4:02am)
Raj Bhakta is a man of many passions, and his life thus far has been about following those passions. Only in his 30s, Bhakta has already accomplished more than most do in a lifetime.
“My life shows the effective employment of attention deficit disorder,” said Bhakta.
Some of Bhakta’s long held interests are politics, history and entrepreneurship. While in his senior year of high school, Bhakta wrote a book about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which he hopes will finally be published this year.
After graduating from Boston College, Bhakta’s plan was to attend the Officer Candidate School for the Marines, but a broken shoulder prevented him from enrolling. Instead, Bhakta dabbled in investment banking in New York City.
“However, I soon realized that I did not want to be working for anybody but myself,” said Bhakta.
Not long after quitting the banking firm, Bhakta embarked on his first of many entrepreneurial endeavors; 23 at the time, he started a company called Automovia, which was eventually sold to Chrysler in 2003.
That same year, Bhakta decided to try his hand at his family’s hotel business, which he said was a huge financial success. He soon decided to change directions.
“I grew tired of my father breathing down my neck the whole time,” said Bhakta.
He was not bored for long, though, as that same year, Bhakta discovered the TV show “The Apprentice.”
“I had never owned a TV, and still don’t to this day, but my friends told me that I just needed to try out for the show,” said Bhakta.
Heeding his friends’ advice, Bhakta beat out thousands of candidates and earned a spot on the show.
“The Apprentice was interesting,” said Bhakta. “The show brings out many of the least attractive elements of human behavior. People have got their knives out and are trying to stick it into each others’ backs.”
Bhakta did his best not to take the show too seriously.
“I tried to insulate myself from getting too caught up in the madness,” he said.
Even though Bhakta did not win the show, he remembers his experiences fondly. One if his favorite memories is asking tennis star Anna Kournikova out on a date. Kournikova agreed to go out with Bhakta only if he could return one of her five serves. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful. As punishment, Bhakta had to run around Arthur Ashe Stadium in his boxer shorts.
“Another highlight of the show was when I got to be a judge on Miss USA, along with Michael Phelps, Molly Sims and Frederick Fekkai,” he said.
Bhakta said that another of his favorite experiences on the show was, ironically, his firing.
“When most people get fired they cry and have breakdowns,” he said. “When I got fired I asked out Donald Trump’s assistant.”
Unlike Kournikova, she said yes.
After his run with “The Apprentice,” Bhakta began to pursue his political passions. After working for the White House in an outreach program that worked to recruit young voters, Bhakta was recruited by the Republican Party to run for Congress in 2006.
Running in a district close to Philadelphia, Bhakta encountered immediate problems with the media.
“As a Republican who had been on a reality TV show, the local media had already written my story before they knew my name,” he said. “And the story wasn’t good.”
Bhakta knew that if he wanted media attention, he needed to get it on a national level. He decided to make border control a main piece of his platform. To attract attention, Bhakta went to great lengths.
“I rode an elephant and crossed the Rio Grande with a mariachi band in order to show how open the border was,” he said.
The scheme worked in grabbing the media’s interest. According to Bhakta, his stunt showed “the absurdity of our policies. Trillions of dollars were being spent in the name of national security, but there is no border control whatsoever. I wanted to put a light on the absurdity of national American security policy.”
Still, it did not help him to win the election. As for any prospects for running in the future, Bhakta remains hesitant.
“When we begin to reap what we have sown in terms of fiscal irresponsibility, I will think about running for office again,” he said. “But at the current moment, the nation is in a toxic haze of denial.”
After his loss, Bhakta had no clear plan for what to do with his life.
“But then it dawned on me, that I really wanted to go and find an Indian Steve Irwin,” he said.
He traveled through India’s national parks, but unfortunately was unsuccessful in his quest.
After returning to the U.S., Bhakta purchased a farm in Shoreham, Vt., in 2007. A native of Philadelphia and a part-time resident of New York City, Bhakta had been up to Vermont many times to visit a friend who lives nearby. He decided to pursue another one of his passions — whiskey — to make his property productive after spending a cold Vermont winter on his farm.
Putting his entrepreneurial skills to work, Bhakta made the nation’s first single estate rye distillery, naming his company WhistlePig. The company has received praise from a multitude of sources, and was named one of the top five whiskeys of the year by Wall Street Journal.
“Business is booming,” said Bhakta.
However, just having a whiskey company was not enough for Bhakta, who felt that it was necessary to have brand mascots as well. A few months ago, he bought Maude and Mortimer, two Kune Kune pigs who are cousins, to fill this role. He has hired a pig trainer to teach his animals to be well behaved so they can make their debut with him this summer in New York City.
“The pigs will walk with me in the city down the most exclusive streets, into the fanciest bars and restaurants, and down the red carpet,” he said.
He has also gotten the pigs custom made clothing; Maude has a Chanel-style dress, and Mortimer has a seersucker suit.
“The company has to be well represented,” said Bhakta. “Pigs need to feel a little glamour too.”
Currently, the pigs stay in Shoreham. He seems to have bonded well with them, as Maude and Mortimer sometimes sleep in his bedroom.
However, Bhakta said he “draws the line at [his] bed.”
Bhakta has always valued his company’s relationship with the College, as he has employed some students as interns. In fact, WhistlePig’s first bottle of whiskey was bottled with the help of Middlebury students. He hopes to recruit more interns for summer and year-round positions when he gives a talk on entrepreneurship and risk on April 25 at 4:30 p.m. in McCardell Bicentennial Hall. Bhakta’s goal is to find students willing to care for his pigs in New York and make a mini-series on YouTube detailing the pigs’ lives in the big city.
(04/21/11 4:01am)
“I guess I’ve always had this kind of independent streak,” Zach Schuetz ’11 said halfway through our interview, as though that was not evident from the moment he strolled into the Grille. The bearded New Hampshire native had chosen to accent his hoodie and jeans with a plaid bathrobe, tweed cap, fingerless leather gloves and orange patterned socks with sandals. The backdrop of the Grille, usually warm and inviting, felt pathetically generic in comparison.
Perhaps a stage would have been more appropriate. A theatre and music enthusiast, homeschooled from first to eighth grade, Schuetz quickly found himself on a different wavelength from many of his peers.
“I was involved in theatre and band and a bunch of different groups that weren’t ‘cool’ according to the majority,” he said.
Even his shoulder-length hair and beard — which he stopped shaving senior year — elicit strong reactions.
“People would comment on it and just be like, ‘Wow, it’s so weird that there’s a guy with a beard here,’” he said. “I would just be like, ‘Well, it’s actually sort of the natural state of things for most guys.’”
This matter-of-fact attitude served him well in his transition to Middlebury.
“When I got to college,” he said, “I was like, ‘Wait a minute. There’s no one stopping me from doing whatever I want, wearing whatever I want, spending my time how I choose.’ It’s been a lot of fun.”
With a newfound sense of empowerment and more leisure time than he had to work with in high school, he began to explore a wide range of opportunities. Over the past four years, he has sung with a cappella groups of the Renaissance, Christian and anime varieties; played Quidditch; joined Xenia, the substance-free social house; and played percussion in both the pep band and the pit for the Middlebury College Musical Players. He also enjoys Dungeons and Dragons (a fantasy role-playing game), anime, video games and science fiction stories.
The line between Schuetz’s leisure activity and academic work is blurred when it comes to languages. In total, the Japanese major and linguistics minor has studied five at Middlebury: Japanese, Spanish, German, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek.
“I like to hang out and talk with people about different languages they’re learning and try and compare different structures. I get really excited when you find some obscure word that turns out to be related to … some language that you wouldn’t think.”
Along the same lines, he truly appreciates his classmates’ intellectual drive, both inside and outside of classes.
“I love the academic environment here, but also the sense that you can’t learn everything you need to know from being in class…The liberal arts experience is about educating the total individual, and I really appreciate that.”
Among those who inspire him the most are his academic advisers and the friends he has met here: “really amazing, intelligent, creative people and just good people.”
It seems reasonable to wonder: as one of the College’s biggest fans, how does he think he has contributed to it? In addition to “providing [his] voice” to various musical endeavors, Schuetz is proud of his involvement in the fledgling linguistics program, as a member of the first graduating class with the option of the minor.
“So those are the more tangible things,” he said by way of summary, adding a thoughtful stroke of his mustache. (Something good just had to follow.) On the other hand, “From a personal standpoint, I’d like to think just by walking down the street that I like to shake up people’s expectations.”
And shake he does, often spotted around campus in eccentric combinations of accessories and/or bright colors. Schuetz does not intend these to be taken as mere expressions of self, but as encouragement to follow suit (no pun intended).
“We have a lot of freedom here,” he said, “and I think some people don’t take advantage of that, to say, ‘Hey, you know I’m just going to wear pajamas to class and dress in neon colors today or do something crazy like just get together and find a hill and roll down it.’
Even in small ways, he hopes that his clothing adds whimsy to life on campus.
“The difference between laughing at somebody and laughing with them is not as big as you might think,” he said. “As long as I make people’s days a little more interesting, then I’m definitely happy with that.”
While studying Japanese at Middlebury’s language school, he made an effort to wear costumes to class on Fridays.
“You know,” he said casually, as though it were obvious, “dress up like a wizard or Robin Hood or whatever.”
One Friday, the day of a major test, was particularly memorable.
“I walked into class [in costume], and people started giggling, and I had someone tell me right after the class — in Japanese, of course, because it was Japanese school — ‘I’m so glad that you wore that today because I was really nervous before the test.’”
He hopes that by setting his example, he can remind his peers to take a step back and gain some perspective.
“Yes, there’s a test,” he said of that summer day, “but it’s still Friday, and you can still relax and go a little crazy. That one day, it was all worth it.”
This summer, Schuetz will be doing Java programming for a software company in California. Though all of his previous jobs have related to computer software, there remains “a total disconnect” between his work experience and academic focus.
“I’ve never actually taken a computer course,” he said flatly. “I’ve just sort of picked it up on the side.”
In the fall, he will return to Japan to work for a community outreach program affiliated with His Call Church, which he attended during his semester abroad in Nagoya. He looks forward to coordinating and leading the youth groups that so inspired him during his visit.
“When I went there, it was amazing, seeing the energy they have and the passion,” he said. “I just thought to myself, … it’s music, and it’s languages, and it’s talking to people and it’s something that I would love to be a part of.”
After “at least a year, hopefully two” in Japan, he hopes to return to the States, attend graduate school and teach Japanese.
“I just love the language so much,” he said. “I would love to have the opportunity to share that with others ... even maybe at Middlebury, if that’s possible.”
As he plans for life after Middlebury, Schuetz advises new students to spend the first year exploring their options, academic and otherwise. “
Just stop,” he said, “take some time, get your bearings, find what interests you, do something you never thought you would do and see how you like it.”
And if an email signoff is any indication, this is certainly a man to be trusted.
“Peace and nifty hats, Zach Schuetz.”
(04/21/11 3:57am)
Musically speaking, 2009 was a dying year. But thanks to a team of indie superheroes including Animal Collective, Passion Pit and The Dirty Projectors, humanity was saved from the soul-sucking clutches of Susan Boyle and auto-tune. Although no definitive list of music’s heroes exists, one thing’s for certain: no indie Justice League would be complete without the hot and fuzzy eponymous debut of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
Two years later, the Pains are back with their sophomore effort, Belong. Just as loud and twee as their debut, Belong exhibits the same indebtedness to 90s dream pop and shoegaze that the band has always worn on its sleeve. Of course, this comes as no surprise, especially considering their collaboration with British producers Flood and Alan Moulder (acclaimed for their work with The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and The Smashing Pumpkins). In other words, you can expect this album to be chock-full of ear-splitting guitars, wispy vocals and infectious melodies.
And that’s exactly what you get. After 15 seconds of mock delicacy, the title track explodes into a whir of distortion and breathy intimations of adolescent love. Refusing to settle down, the album races from the rumbling bass and cheesy synths of highlight “Heart in Your Heartbreak” to the groovy swirl and breakneck beat of “The Body.” But halfway through the album, the Pains offer a bit of respite from all the thunder. The jangly guitars and swelling chorus of “Anne With an E” begin the soft descent, while “Even In Dreams,” at once confident and vulnerable, sounds like a hard rock cover of a slow-dance scene from some mid-80s Molly Ringwald movie.
One of the distinguishing features about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is lead singer Kip Berman’s boyish innocence and shrouded delivery. Ever faithful to his shoegaze roots, Berman views his voice as yet another texture in the mix, and although he has unearthed his vocals from the reverb-soaked trenches of their debut, he’s still nearly indecipherable. When you finally figure out what he’s saying, you notice how his childlike croon often belies his dark, melancholic subject matter. Sex, drugs and adolescent fears and desires pervade his lyrics, as heard on “Girl of 1,000 Dreams,” another of Belong’s highlights: “Held my breath, thought of death and things I’d like to do ’til then: See my friends, lose my head, wake up with you in my bed.” Thanks to Berman’s earnest and youthful delivery, these emotionally charged lyrics never cross over into over-sentimental babble.
So how exactly have the Pains progressed over the past two years? And what’s the difference between Belong and their debut, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, anyway? Well, for one, Belong is a more mature album, leaving the band more streamlined and polished without having sold its soul. Their more profound dynamic shifts, for example, allow for subtler verses and more arresting choruses. But for the most part, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are still the same old twee-pop band that saved the day in 2009. Mighty guitar riffs and saccharine hooks still abound, and their albums still deserve to be cranked up to 11. Let’s hope those aspects never change.
(03/24/11 4:04am)
The College takes great pride in the quality of the food served in its dining halls. Matthew Biette, director of dining services, seeks local and organic products whenever possible. Though just 19 percent of the College’s food funds purchase Vermont products, Biette stressed that the statistic “depends on how you count it and what our luck is.”
“The local food movement is important for the local economy,” said Biette. “It keeps money in the area. If we know the people we buy from … then we are making a healthier community.”
Monument Farms, the source of the College’s dairy products, is a prime example of dependence on the local economy. Monument has maintained a valuable relationship with the College for over 60 years. Such a long-held connection is unique in comparison to other food providers with which the College works.
Monument Farms, located just a few miles off campus in Weybridge, Vt. is also unique in that it is involved in every aspect of their milk production, unlike most other dairy farms.
“They are completely vertically integrated,” said Biette. “They grow their own feed, they raise their own cows. They are completely local and they are just over that hill. It is really cool!”
A self-contained company, Monument Farms grows the corn to feed its animals, raises the next generation of cows from calf to heifer and completes all of the processing, bottling and distribution of the milk. So, when you drink a glass of milk in Proctor, you are consuming a genuine Vermont product that was produced — from start to finish — just miles away from where you are sitting.
“We are in control of everything from growing the feed to delivering the milk to the customer,” said Pete James, one of the owners of Monument Farms.
The farm has been run by the same family since the 1920s and is currently run by brothers Pete and Bob James and their cousin, Jon Rooney, all of whom grew up on and around the farm. The secret to having so much control over their product is found in the unique way the owners divide the work: Pete is in charge of the cows and fields, Jon the milk production and Bob the logistics and distribution of the milk.
“Probably one of the keys to our success is that we do not step on each other’s toes or anything like that, yet we all work together,” said Pete James. “It is one business and without [each aspect] we would not be the same. [The organization] just came about naturally.”
The family’s dedication to Monument Farms is evident in the high quality of its milk.
“I cannot imagine a purer product than what we produce,” said Rooney.
Bob echoed his cousin, noting that one of the reasons why Monument Farms milk is so good is because of the local, self-contained aspect of the company.
“The amount of miles that the feed has to travel to get to [other] farms and then the miles the milk has to travel to get to the processing plant and then get distributed is unreal,” said Bob.
Monument Farms cuts out all these extra transport steps. Not surprisingly, the owners are very conscious of the impact that they have on the local environment. A significant measure of their dedication to sustainability and the environment is the money they have spent on a methane digester, which will be functioning in two months. One of the inevitable drawbacks to dairy farming is that cows produce tons of manure and, along with that manure, tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It is a constant struggle for dairy farmers to figure out what to do with all of the effluent; the new methane digester at Monument Farms will help solve this problem.
“In essence,” said Rooney, “instead of the manure going into an open manure pit and getting spread on the fields [the way it usually is] it will go into a digester, which is heated and the bacteria produce methane as well as other by-products. We will capture the methane and use it as natural gas to power a generator.”
Yet the machine does more than just produce methane for power.
“It is like a swimming pool with a cement top over it that seals in the gas for 21 days,” said Bob. “Then the manure goes through a separator that squeezes the liquid out of the solids. The liquid just goes to a manure pit, which will then get spread on the field just like it always was because it has the same nutrient value. The dry matter in the manure will go on a conveyer and will drop into a room, which will then be reused for bedding for cows.”
In essence, the digester takes a byproduct that was once used just as fertilizer and gives it many other uses. Using methane as power, however, is not the most compelling reason for installing the digester.
“It is not an efficient way of making electricity,” said Rooney. “The main driver behind this was to produce our own bedding because it is hard to come by and it is expensive.”
Traditionally bedding for cows is sawdust, a cheap, easily found material. But, with the advent of more wood-free building products, sawdust is increasingly more expensive and difficult to find. With the methane digester, this problem is solved.
“We were looking at it more for the bedding and electricity is a nice way to have it pay for itself,” said Rooney. “It is a huge investment in spite of the fact that we have got a bunch of grant money to do it. We are probably kicking in about the same amount of our own money to do it.”
Because of the enormous costs involved, there are only six or seven other dairies in Vermont that have similar methane digesters. Yet money to build the machines has become increasingly available because of the substantial benefits they offer.
Vermont’s power companies have started a program, “Cow Power,” that offers incentives to farmers who want to install methane digesters. The money comes from people who offer to pay slightly extra per kilowatt-hour on their electrical bill to help fund projects like the one at Monument Farms. In coming years, smaller dairy farms will be able to install digesters, though right now Monument’s grip on new technology keeps it at the head of the industry.
Pete credits the green movement for making the project possible.
“As this ‘green’ movement has gone on and on, the incentives for doing this have become greater,” he said. “The reason there are not more digesters is because it takes a big dairy farm. The practical ability to install one revolved around having a lot of cows. Now they have come up with digesters where they can have as little as 50 cows.” Currently, Monument has over 500 dairy cows.
Monument’s methane digester, in addition to its close proximity and high quality of its milk, is yet another reason why Biette loves doing business with the farm.
“We get today’s milk tomorrow or yesterday’s milk today,” said Biette. “It is that fresh.”
(03/24/11 4:01am)
At a school filled with active learners and avid debaters, it is a wonder that this club has not existed until now. Pioneered by Kelsey Henry ’14, the Mock Trial Club is in the process of becoming Middlebury newest student organization.
“I did mock trial in high school and it was a big consideration in my college search,” said Henry. “But, I ended up choosing a school which had no mock trial club.”
Then, over Winter Term, Henry took “The Death Penalty in the United States, in Theory and Practice,” a course culminating in a mock trial. After seeing the success of her class’s final, Henry decided to try and put a mock trial club into motion and emailed the entire political science department to determine interest levels. To her delight, she received a good student response.
“I also did mock trial in high school,” said Ben Anderson ’14.5, “and I was really excited when I heard they were starting a team.”
“I did it in high school as well,” said Jay Plamondon ’14, “and had a lot of fun.”
But the club is not exclusively for those with previous experience. In fact, mock trial is encouraging those with no prior participation to attend meetings that, along with offering information about mock trials, always feature baked goods.
“I thought the idea had some real appeal,” said Chris Inzerillo ’13, who did not participate in mock trial in high school. “It seemed like it’d be a lot of fun, so I went to the first meeting and haven’t stopped since. For people without experience, you learn a lot, it’s easy to pick up and [it is] a lot of fun.”
Mock trial teams are involved in intercollegiate competitions, governed by the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA), an organization that sponsors regional and national-level competitions and provides an interesting, complex and fictional case for teams to address. The schools split up into teams of six or seven — with approximately three witnesses and three attorneys — and proceed with opening statements, directing their witnesses, cross-examining their opponents’ and finishing with closing statements.
“Mock trial is an intellectual competition that requires you to think on your feet, and it’s intense,” said Henry.
“It’s a good way to practice public speaking and thinking on your feet,” said Anderson.
Every year AMTA selects one case for collegiate mock trial teams to focus on, giving students opportunities to examine the case from every angle and become truly invested in the process.
“There’s something about getting into a case that’s both challenging and really fun and you get to carry it out throughout the year,” said Inzerillo.
“You definitely get really attached,” said Anderson.
Unfortunately, the birth of the team came too late in the year to compete in AMTA’s regional competitions. Still, the club is working hard to be ready for next year.
“We really hit the ground running,” said Anderson.
“I’m trying to set up a sort of scrimmage invitational this spring to prep for next year,” said Henry. “College mock trial is a huge step up from high school — it’s an entirely different animal.”
The club meetings, which are now every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. in MBH 338, are relaxed and informative opportunities for members to get to know each other and learn the nuances of mock trial strategy.
“We come in, eat some cookies, talk about mock trial and then talk about the case and how we can use the elements of mock trial,” said Henry. “And then we do some organizational stuff, because I’m wildly disorganized.”
Due to its recent and somewhat untimely founding, the club is not yet generating the kind of momentum it would like.
“Our first meeting we had 16 people, but we’ve had a lot of attrition,” said Henry.
“Seniors are hesitant since it’s too late to do the case this year,” said Inzerillo.
However, they are always looking for new members and encouraging anyone with interest to come to a meeting.
(03/24/11 3:58am)
Platform: Nintendo DS
Rating: Teen
One of my favorite franchises of all time is Ace Attorney, a visual novel series focusing on the wacky cases of a defense attorney. Once a Japan-exclusive, the series made quite a splash on the western market recently with its colorful and memorable characters, amazingly written story arcs and beautiful animation. When I heard that the same studio that produced the Ace Attorney series was releasing an entirely new, original project, I immediately jumped aboard the S.S Ghost Trick.
Ghost Trick places the player in the role of … well, I can’t reveal your character’s name because it’s an important aspect of the plot, but what I can reveal is that the game opens with your character being recently deceased. You now find yourself as a ghost and only have one night to figure out who killed you and why. On your journey you will encounter other characters that you must help with the use of your “ghost tricks.” These “tricks” involve you interacting with the environment via possession of inanimate objects, and are the only actions you can make as a ghost. Each inanimate object can then do something in particular; possessing a bell will make it ring, for example. The larger puzzles of the game require you to string multiple tricks together and in the correct order, so you can save the lives of other characters that are important to the plot.
The portraits of the various characters are flat-out gorgeous, as are the animations. I would seriously consider just watching the game move on its own for hours. Since it is a DS title, there is no voice acting so there will be a lot of text to read. Like I said in my review of 999 (another visual novel game), if you don’t like to read, go play something else. The game’s script is a great combination of humor and murder mystery, and some very crazy twists appear. It provides a satisfactory ending, even if it is a little open-ended.
My only real complaint of Ghost Trick is the sudden difficulty spikes. Most of the puzzles will provide just the right amount of challenge, but all of a sudden you will stumble on one that you will consistently fail. While I never had to use a walkthrough, there were times when I had to put the game down for a while and go do something else.
While no contender against the Ace Attorney games, Ghost Trick still offers a unique adventure with beautiful visuals. If you have a DS, why not distract yourself with this game on the trip home this spring break?
Ghost Trick gets an 8/10.
(03/10/11 5:13am)
Lately, I’ve been taking a class on social movements; civil rights, farm workers unions, peaceful uprisings in the Middle East — you name it. And while I have learned that there is no way to explain these powerful events as a whole — each is unprecedented in its own way — some key components do emerge regarding the foundations of how people fight for what they want and believe in most.
Unearned suffering is one — images of peaceful protestors unflinchingly taking on police dogs and fire hoses will probably be forever ingrained upon the public consciousness. Catalysts are another — the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia will probably be forever credited with sparking revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman and Libya.
A clearly personified enemy is one key component that I am particularly fascinated with, regarding the problem of runaway climate change. The free India movement had the British Empire; farm workers had the growers; Hitler and the National Socialists had the idea of racial and ethnic impurity.
Climate change doesn’t have a go-to guy the way many movements have had in the past. The group of things we could blame — both inanimate and animate — is broad and deep: oil executives, third-world clear-cutting farmers, individualism, cement companies, cars, coal, overconsumption, the Koch brothers; the list goes on.
This lack of a clearly defined enemy is part of the reason why I believe the climate movement has been losing the fight thus far. It’s hard to rally around something that surrounds you without just shadow-boxing; carbon dioxide is in many ways the very foundation of existence in the 21st century.
The movement is however, waking up to this fact. 350.org — one of the world’s leading climate groups run by our very own Middlebury ’07 graduates and scholar in residence Bill McKibben — has just launched a campaign taking on the U.S Chamber of Commerce — a staunchly conservative interest group that claims to represent more than 3 million businesses but is almost entirely funded by 16 gigantic companies. The Chamber has taken every chance they can to fight climate and energy reform and protect big business — so much so that in disapproval of their climate platform several companies like Nike and Levi’s left their board of directors last year.
350.org is touring the country encouraging small businesses to speak out and tell the truth about how the U.S Chamber of Commerce doesn’t speak for them. I’m really excited about what they’re doing — by picking a specific target and vilifying them across the country, 350.org is putting us on the road to nailing down just who is responsible for this global problem.
But in the end, we will have to do more than take on big business. We will have to confront something that exists within all of us; a tendency for unbridled consumption, disregard for the importance of co-dependent communities and a powerful resistance to change. If anyone has any ideas about how we can take these on without making enemies out of ourselves, I’d love to hear it.
(03/03/11 5:30am)
It’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and Tim Spears leans toward the hanging silver microphone as he pushes up a couple of sliders on the mixing board in the WRMC studio. Behind Spears hovers Matt Jennings, Spears’ co-DJ. For most of the week, Spears, vice president for administration and professor of American studies, and Jennings, editor of Middlebury Magazine, have very different jobs. But late on Friday afternoons, they meet in a small room on the second floor of Proctor Hall to share a common passion: music. As hosts of the radio program "68 Degrees and Holding," they have spent the past several years playing a mix of indie tracks and classic rock hits.
Spears had already started with the program when he ran into Jennings at the Grille about four years go.
“Spears said ‘Why don’t you come on up; and after we did the show he said ‘That’s fun. We should do it again,’” remembered Jennings. For both men, music has been a part of their lives since their youth. As a teenager, Spears used almost all of his paper delivery route income to buy $3.99 vinyl albums: the Beatles, Traffic and Black Sabbath. For Jennings, an introduction to music came in the form of boxes of albums brought home by his father from the local college radio station. Together, they use what they call their “generational perspective” to try and expose the Middlebury community to music they might not otherwise hear.
“It’s fun to break the scope of the college music mold,” said Spears describing how college radio stations have the tendency to play the same repertoire of tracks. “It’s fun to push back the grain.”
But Jennings and Spears are not the only ones in the room above Proctor. The five members of Split Tongue Crow, a folk/Americana band from Rutland, are crowded around a second microphone. They were playing at 51 Main that evening and the hosts brought them in to talk about their music. Jennings interviews the musicians as Spears loads their latest album into one of three CD players; they are not afraid to play new music.
They spin a few more tracks, then collect their things and flip the switch that starts the Democracy Now! stream. For the next hour, the nationally broadcast independent news show plays on WRMC’s frequency: 91.1 FM. These days, it is one of the few times in the week when the station plays something other than music or banter. But it was not always like that.
WRMC’s origins are not especially glamorous. Founded in 1949, the station first broadcast from a chicken coop behind what is now Proctor Hall. Its programming was transmitted through a system of class bells, which ran alongside high-voltage power lines on College Street. Things went smoothly until one day the office received a call from Maine. Someone was listening to WRMC two states away. It soon became apparent that the signal was getting extremely amplified, and when the FCC started asking questions, WRMC decided it was time to get a real transmitter.
The station moved into Proctor Hall and a cord ran up to the top of Gifford where a new system allowed WRMC to become the first station in the Champlain Valley with 24 hours of live programming.
During this time, WRMC had a strong focus on news reporting and broadcasting. Jim Douglas ’72, the former Governor of Vermont, was the news director at WRMC for two years. During his tenure at the station, he described a serious rivalry between The Campus and the radio station.
“We used to regard ourselves as competitors,” Douglas said. During the Vietnam era, the DJs would interrupt their music to report on draft numbers.
“I remember being down there with the teletype and watching the birthdays [being called up] come over, and announcing them live over the radio,” Douglas said.
During the same era, another notable Vermonter made a name for himself at the station. Chris Graff ’75, who worked for 28 years in the Montpelier bureau of the Associated Press, described in an e-mail how he used to practically live at the station.
“In the 1970s WRMC produced lots of broadcast journalists … of national stature,” he wrote. “For a number of years having WRMC on your resume was as golden as going to graduate school in journalism.”
Though journalism was a backbone of WRMC for many years, it started to disappear about 15 years ago according to Taylor Smith ’11, WRMC’s general manager.
“Everyone gets their news from the internet,” Smith said on a recent tour of the WRMC facilities. He also attributed the decline in reporting to a lack of interest on the part of students involved.
“Nobody really wants to do a news show,” he said.
But there is at least one bastion of current events coverage at the station: live sports broadcasting.
Turn your radio dial to 91.1 on the fall afternoon of a football game or a winter evening during a Panthers basketball game and you are likely the hear the voice of Andy Singer ’11, WRMC’s sports director.
Since the early days of the station, an effort has been made to broadcast live, play-by-play programming from selected athletic events.
An hour before each game, Singer sets ups his equipment. As the action begins, he gets into the match keeping fans not only across the Champlain Valley but also across the world (thanks to the station’s internet streaming) informed about every play.
A few years ago, an interest in radio and a love of sports brought him to WRMC.
“I don’t think you can do a live broadcast well unless you’re an avid sports fan,” Singer said.
But loving the sport and knowing how to talk about it instantly and constantly are very different things. Unfortunately, Singer was never taught the latter.
“I asked him [the then sports director] for some tips and he said ‘just try to sound intelligent.’ Ten seconds later, I was on,” Singer said. Now he listens to recordings of his own broadcasts to critique himself.
The shift away from news and towards a full schedule of talk and music is not the only major change that WRMC is dealing with.
In warmer months, it is easy to ignore the smokestack rising from the College’s biomass gasification plant, but in winter the steam rising from the giant chimney attracts a second glance. What most people do not realize, however, is that they are also looking at the transmission tower for WRMC. Follow an imaginary path up the big hill, into the north side of Proctor Hall, up a little-used staircase, and you’ll find yourself in front of a door plastered with stickers. Welcome to WRMC.
Behind the colorful door and down a hallway, completely covered on one side with shelving filled with CDs, there is a single room that is at the heart of the radio station and the focus of its next big project: digitization. The walls are shelves and more shelving fills the middle of the space. Crammed into every crevice are CDs and vinyl albums.
“By my count we have 21,000 CDs,” said Sam Safran ’12, “we’ve digitized about 200 of them.” Safran is the man in charge of turning the station’s physical music into digital music, a sisyphean task given the daily influx of new albums.
“We get 200 CDs a month, and much more digital music,” said Smith. “Most of it gets thrown out though because they’re terrible.”
Interestingly, the station buys only a handful of albums each year; the rest come courtesy of promoters.
But there is still much work to be done. WRMC has a machine that can digitize 100 CDs at a rate of about one disc every two or three minutes. Vinyl is another story; it cannot be digitized faster than it can be played, which means the process can take up to 45 minutes per etched side.
“We haven’t started working on [vinyl] at all,” Safran said. But for an audiophile like Safran (“I spend way too much time on music,” he said) it is not always a simple task.
“It’s hard to work because I just read every single label,” he said.
Every CD the station plays has a handwritten label on it with especially good tracks highlighted and some DJ comments. Safran is trying to figure out a way to keep some of the original markups with the new digital information, but the transfer can still be bittersweet.
“Part of me is sad we’re digitizing because I like the physical aspect,” he said.
The truth is, the station does not really have a choice. A new regulation is coming into effect that requires radio stations to submit 13 pieces of data about each song played, up from the current three requirements: song name, group name, album name. Fortunately for Safran and others for whom jewel cases and slipcovers have sentimental value, the law also requires stations to keep all the material they’ve turned digital.
“Eventually we’ll probably just put it all in a storage unit,” Smith said.
As Democracy Now! starts to wind down, Moss Turpan ’14 sets his Macbook on the table in the studio. He plugs a cord into the headphone jack and settles in for his weekly broadcast.
“I’ve always loved music and I thought that having a radio show would be kind of interesting,” Turpan says looking through songs on his computer.
This evening the theme of the creatively titled “Moss Show” is the “Best of something.” He pushes up the volume on his first track, Louis Armstrong’s “All That Meat And No Potatoes,” the best song about meat and potatoes. As the music plays across the speakers in the room and out across the county Turpan talks about the importance of music.
“I definitely think that music has the ability to change the way you’re feeling,” Turpan says. “I feel like I have that experience all the time. Not in a way that I am completely changed, but I can be in a certain mood or situation and it can completely change my mood.”
As he transitions into the best song about being a unicorn (“I was Born (A Unicorn)” by the Unicorns) he talks about what WRMC has to offer.
“It’s a totally unique opportunity to be able to come on air and express yourself to a group of people,” Turpan says.
While clearly a very public enterprise, many DJs spoke about the personal side of their broadcast. For Tim Spears, the radio offers a captive audience.
“I’ve always had this kind of obnoxious desire to say ‘listen to this,’” said Spears, mentioning that at home his wife does not always approve.
Safran, who has had a show since fall of his freshman year enjoys the two hours each week he gets to just relax and listen to some music.
“To me, what’s nice is just the personal time I get …” Safran said. “You’re broadcasting out but I just don’t really think about that. It’s almost for yourself.”
But some students have taken up the challenge of getting non-DJs on air.
Fall 2010, Chris de la Cruz ’13, Carly Shumaker ’13 and Martin Sweeney ’13, came up with a show called ‘All My Friends.’ Each week they would pick a theme (Proctor Crush, Dad, Ex-Girlfriend) and have several students tell a narrative. They would create playlists based on that theme and mix the music with the stories.
“I feel like [WRMC] sometimes has the reputation of being a little goofy. But what I liked about our show was that we weren’t that goofy. We kind of had a great goal which was the narratives,” Sweeney said. “People like to hear the stories. Some of them were heartwarming and some of them were sad.”
By broadcasting the sometimes highly personal stories to unseen strangers, de la Cruz hoped to build community on campus.
“Some random person can hear a story on the air about a moment someone else shared with their father that they find they relate to,” wrote de la Cruz in an e-mail, “and maybe then they see that person walking to class and they say ‘Hey, I heard your story last night and it reminded me so much of a moment I once had.’ At that point I think people are connecting who wouldn’t normally connect.”
There is another show, however, that brings people together on the air.
Just before 6 p.m. on Saturday, a group of 10 to 20 students gather in the WRMC offices. The first group of four or five, sets up shop around a long conference table. Each person has a microphone sitting in front of him or her and an open laptop with some text on the screen. Middlebury Radio Theater is about to go live. As they get into their script, their faces become animated but their bodies stay still. From behind a large window, Noah Mease ’11 directs the show. He has been involved with radio theater since his freshman year.
“There’s something really quirky about radio theater,” Mease said. “You get to tell stories in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise. We can do these epic, crazy high-budget things.” As he spoke, he cued some sounds effects from a laptop. British and not-quite-British accents burbled from the speakers above his head; they were performing a skit about stamp collectors. The scripts the group reads come from a combination of sources: vintage scripts, screenplays adapted by students and frequently, original writing.
“As a playwriting major it’s great because it’s a group of people that will produce whatever I write,” Mease said.
Indeed the appeal of WRMC is its versatility — its ability to be many different things for many different people. For some, like Smith and Safran, it offers an alternative to commercial radio.
“It’s something completely different from regular radio,” Smith said. “It’s very eclectic.”
“I can hardly listen to regular radio anymore,” Safran said referring to one of WRMC’s biggest boons: no commercials.
For others, it is about the Middlebury community and the music it listens to.
“I think it’s an awesome way for people to see and share new music,” Turpan said.
“It’s important for WRMC to exist because it is a form of free expression … WRMC gives people a voice….who may not be that outspoken otherwise,” wrote de la Cruz in an e-mail, “I think the music they choose is definitely a form of expression that can at times be even more powerful than words.”
Additional reporting by Leah Pickett, Features Editor
WRMC Homepage
(03/03/11 5:15am)
On Feb. 24 the art department sponsored a talk featuring Joey Fauerso, known for her award-winning work exploring the dynamic intersection between seemingly disparate themes — the male nude in frothy Rococo landscapes, or painting joined with animation to a custom-made soundtrack of clapping hands and clanking horns.
A painter by training, Fauerso told her audience that she has always had a lingering fascination with layered elements that may not quite go together, perhaps stemming from a childhood spent at a meditation colony in rural Iowa. At times her family and her parents’ friends, most of them transplants to the state drawn to the community’s emphasis on Eastern philosophies, seemed at odds with the surrounding area, which was rural and decidedly conservative.
“It was a transcendental, alternative community, but growing up in Iowa it had a surreal quality because it contrasted so much with the rural Midwest,” Fauerso said. “We would travel to other centers around the world. In India I saw such an emphasis on ritual, transient splendor, garlands of flowers, Hindu deities, rebirth — a sort of perishable opulence.”
This delicate balance appears again and again in Fauerso’s work. One recurring subject in particular comes to mind: the male nude painted onto found landscapes discovered at garage sales and old wallpaper, arms outstretched, mouth wide open, crouched, dancing, but often contrasted with the opulent patterns of the nature in which he is situated.
Fauerso acknowledges that her work does gravitate towards the male nude as a subject, often placed to mimic classical pieces occupying museums that feature nude women frolicking with cupids and swings or languishing in the lush undergrowth.
“In some ways, it just happened. As an undergrad I mostly painted friends, who mostly happened to be men,” she said. “Post-modern art is all about different perspectives, but I still think there’s a huge historical backlog in how the female vs. the male body is portrayed. It comes down to a simple desire to see more of a range and complexity. It’s an interesting subject to me, one which is easy to make big and theatrical.”
Fauerso describes a turning point in her work as the moment when she painted her brother onto an old mural she found at a hotel.
“The disjunction between his figure and the idyllic rural landscape as metaphor for how we position ourselves in space, how we perceive our surroundings, really pushed me in a new direction,” Fauerso said during her lecture.
Art is by no means a static process, and Fauerso’s work continues to evolve. Her recent foray into animation has produced fascinating results. One piece she presented was composed of over 300 paintings done of a friend making different facial expressions, then played in sequence. The work is inspired by a story from the Bhagavid Gita in which the child god Krishna opens his mouth for his human foster mother, who sees the entirety of the universe laid out before her. In Fauerso’s animation, her friend opens his mouth, and we find the starry heavens where his tonsils should be.
Another animation shows a flock of painted birds — really a few birds superimposed over and over again using software — undulating in and out of the screen, while another portrays a painted man and tree continually fading in and out of existence to the melancholy strains of “Death of an Outlaw” from Aaron Copland’s ballet, “Billy the Kid.”
Animation has once again pushed Fauerso’s work toward the juxtaposition between two seemingly mismatched phenomena, in this case the age-old tradition of painting and newer innovations in software technology. The two are literally layered on top of each other in pieces that portray live-action models frolicking against found landscapes, with painted birds darting across the horizon.
However daring and new the medium, Fauerso’s work remains at home in the layering of contrasting elements; unexpected, colorful, patterned and very much alive.
(03/03/11 5:05am)
The Rikert Ski Touring Center at the Bread Loaf Mountain Campus in Ripton, Vt. hosted the 2011 TD Bank Bill Koch League Festival on Saturday, Feb. 26 and Sunday, Feb. 27. The two-day event hosted over 500 five- to thirteen-year-old racers, marking the highest participation rate yet.
In April 2010, Frost Mountain Nordic, Addison County’s cross-country ski club, put in a bid to the New England Nordic Ski Association (NENSA) with hopes of hosting the annual Bill Koch Festival at Bread Loaf. Bruce Ingersoll, who skied for Bates College’s nordic team and graduated from Breadloaf in 1996, was co-chair of the Bill Koch Festival this year, and was proud to organize the event. A resident of Middlebury, Ingersoll worked closely with his co-chairs, Chris and Barney Hodge, the owners of Sunrise Orchards in Middlebury. Since receiving the good news last spring, the three have met on a weekly basis.
“This festival is a celebration of cross-country skiing,” said Ingersoll, who also works at Camp Keewaydin on Lake Dunmore. “This is the biggest event Rikert has ever hosted. It is good for our community, good for our club and good for the sport.”
Ingersoll was personally pleased with his own club, Frost Mountain Nordic. When he moved to Middlebury in 2006 with his wife and two daughters, there were eight children skiing for Frost Mountain. Now the club boasts a youth program of 95 cross-country skiers from across Addison County.
“It is great fun to all get together,” said Andy Grab, a coach for the Mansfield nordic team, located in Mount Mansfield, Vt. “There is energy and smiles, and it’s a warm 15 [degrees]. It is nice there is no wind.”
Each year, the festival organizers pick a theme and encourage participants to dress up for their races. The event was held in Maine last year, and the host site played with its coastline location and chose a “Ski the Wave” themed-festival. As Robert Frost was a frequent summer visitor to Breadloaf, Ingersoll and his co-chairs found inspiration for this year’s theme from Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Ingersoll and his team appropriately named the festival “Skiing by the Woods on a Snowy Day” and encouraged participants and attendees to dress as animals from Frost’s forest. Ingersoll himself took the lead and wore a bear suit.
“I was amazed at the support of the Middlebury community,” he said. “Everyone gave much time and money to the event. It is a really cool thing and the intentions are great.”
Eight different age groups competed at the Bill Koch Festival. On Saturday, after the opening parade, there were a series of mass-start, two-person relays, with each team member skiing two kilometers. Younger kids skied Picnic Loop, while the older ones competed on Battell trail. All racers represented their respective ski clubs, which the event grouped according to region — Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and upstate New York. There are a total of 12 clubs in New England. Ingersoll explained that there is no scoring at the festival, but racers’ results are published.
Christian Ostberg, a 12-year-old from Darien, Ct., skies for Craftsbury Nordic, a team based out of northeastern Vt. Ostberg travels to Stowe, Vt. on the weekends to ski. This year, Ostberg and his 13-year-old brother competed on a relay team together.
“I started skiing since before I can remember,” he said, but credits his dad’s Norwegian background to his love of the sport. “This is an awesome setting. It was a great place to host the event.”
Following the races on Saturday, families were encouraged to join their kids on the Frost Cabin Forest Animal Cruise, a casual, non-competitive opportunity to explore the Rikert Ski Center on skis. Later, a pasta dinner and a silent auction delighted many at Middlebury Union High School. On Sunday, individual competitions were timed, as were the Lollipop Races for the youngest members of the crowd, five and six-year-olds.
Ingersoll and the event staff were all volunteers; any profit made at the festival goes directly to the Frost Mountain Club.
“Any profit goes back to … supporting the kids,” he said. “It also
helps support coaches clinics, which then promotes the sport in Addison County.”
The Bill Koch League is currently in the process of becoming a non-for-profit organization. Its paperwork is pending.
Various venders were also on site over the weekend, including Olivia’s Croutons from New Haven, Vt., Two Guys in Vermont, a soup company based out of Montpelier, Vt. and Vermont Natural Foods from Randolph, Vt., which makes homemade specialty dressings and vinaigrettes. Jen Nemi, a volunteer for Ski Vermont, a non-for-profit that promotes skiing, helped out at the Vermont Natural Foods’ tent.
“It is a very well-attended event. I am impressed,” said Nemi, herself a Nordic and downhill skier.
While the College ski teams hoped to attend the festival, they were at Bates College for the NCAA Regional Championships on Saturday and Sunday. Nonetheless, Ingersoll said both teams were very supportive, and he especially appreciated the help of Andrew Gardner, the head coach of the men’s and women’s Nordic teams. He also thanks Corrine Prevot ’13, as she donated several of her homemade Skida hats to the staff.
“Our motto is, if you have a question then ask the hat,” said Ingersoll.
Nordic racer, Chase Marston ’12 participated in the festival from sixth through eighth grade. He believes it is “an important tradition for skiing because it brings all the young skiers throughout New England together and allows them to meet, befriend and hang out with each other.” A Charlotte, Vt. native, Marston thought Breadloaf was the “perfect venue” for the weekend’s festivities and wished he could have watched the races, as they were the favorite of his career thus far.
“The racing is fun, but the importance of the festival is the lasting effects of the fostering of such a tight knit community,” he said. “This is so evident today. My favorite part of skiing is still the people and the community, and most of my best friends in the sport are from the festival days.”
Austin Cobb ’14, a fellow skier, said the annual snowball fight at the festival is his fondest memory. A participant in the event from the age of 5 to thirteen, Cobb feels he would not be skiing today if it had not been for the Bill Koch League.
“This year, when it [the festival] was up at Rikert, there were way more people than there were at the Middlebury Carnival, which shows just how large of an event the festival is,” said Cobb. “It shows that Nordic skiing is growing in Middlebury and is becoming a prominent and important sport in the area.”
Keely Levins ’13, Marston’s teammate, also competed in the festival from the age of six to 13. She said it is “an important tradition because it pulls skiing out of the many niches of New England, and for days, makes this scattered community whole.” When the event was held in Putney, Vt, both Marston and Levins remember the theme was “Olympians.” Vermont Olympians led the opening parade and spoke with the racers during the two days about their skiing experiences and memories.
Other students from the College also volunteered at the event. Stephen Lammers ’13 and Katie McFarren ’14, members of the Student Emergency Response Team (SERT), were on call in case of emergency or injury.
“It is cool that everyone comes out for an event like this,” said McFarren.
Ingersoll believes Bill Koch is an “innovator” and was thrilled with the outcome of the weekend’s festivities. He said there is “a lot of momentum to continue events like this” in the future and feels the Bill Koch Festival was an important event not only for the racers, but for the community as well.
(03/03/11 5:03am)
There is only one humane society in Addison County, and lucky for Middlebury students, it is in town. Off Route 7 South on Boardman St., the Addison County Humane Society is currently home to 75 animals. Most are cats, but there are also dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs living in the shelter and hoping to be adopted. An additional 50 animals are associated with the society but do not live in the shelter. Since opening in 1975 it has helped over 16,000 lost, abandoned, abused or donated animals.
On each of the cages in the shelter is a description of the animal residing in the kennel. The signs include the animal’s name, age, breed, sex and comfort level interacting with other pets or children. There is also a short story about its personality, how it came to the shelter and the type of home the shelter is seeking for it. The signs are an easy way to learn about the demeanor of each animal so that families can find the best pet to adopt. Although there are most definitely cuddly cats and loving dogs, the shelter takes care of special needs animals that have special dietary restrictions as well. No animal will ever be turned away, and every animal receives as much care as the shelter can provide. There are newborn kittens and twelve-year-old cats, all waiting for a loving home.
Jennifer Erwin, shelter manager, dedicates most of her time to finding homes for the animals. Because there is limited space at the shelter itself, the Addison County Humane Society has developed a foster care program for families.
“The animals need space. Reasons may be medical or behavioral, but for the most part it’s kittens who spend their first 8 weeks with a family,” said Erwin.
Families are invited to come in and fill out an application. After a brief interview, they are given an animal to take home and care for. The shelter helps with veterinarian care, but the family provides the animals with food and other necessities. Although the foster care is not permanent, Erwin said that, “about half the families adopt the animals they were caring for.” In this way, the foster program not only eases the overflow of animals in the shelter, it also unites families with a potential new member.
Addison County Humane Society also has a “guardian angel” program, as not everyone can adopt a pet or keep one in foster care. The guardian angels of the shelter donate a certain amount of money to sponsor a kennel, paying for the space, food and care of the animal for however long they choose; there are rates for one month, three months, six months and up to a year.
“We aren’t funded by any other humane society,” said Erwin. Consequently, the shelter values any donation immensely.
Recently, the humane society developed a new orientation program for those who volunteer. Twice a month for one hour the public is welcome to come and learn how to properly care for the animals. The orientation covers basic care for dogs during a walk, including how to calm the dog, handle the leash and keep it from getting away or hurt. The humane society also offers a complete tour of its facilities so that the volunteers can come back and help whenever they please.
Porter Knight, a resident of Bristol, Vt., and her son Bryson both began volunteering at the humane society one year ago.
“We adopted a dog six years ago,” said Knight, whose son added, “We come to do dogs and cats on Saturdays.”
Knight and other volunteers have discovered that helping the society is also a lot of fun and a great way to spend any afternoon.
Still, the humane society could always use more help, particularly in March and April when it receives an influx of newborn kittens. Even a quick visit to the animals on a day off from work or in between class can help.
(02/24/11 5:15am)
After a brief introduction, Rick Bass walked up to the podium and turned to his audience, taking a long look at the white board. Disconnected words, circles inside circles, arrows, lines and a quote had been scribbled all over the board from the previous class.
“Gosh,” he said in his coarse southern accent. “I wish I could still be a student like y’all.”
In a way, Bass is still a student. Though he has already accomplished a great deal in his 53 years, he still says he has a lot left to learn and to do until his work is complete. While critics have dubbed Bass a “nature writer,” he calls himself an environmental activist. One would think it would be tough to lead this double life — activist by day, writer by night. For Bass, however, these two worlds intersect in a simple passion for wilderness. By writing about the beauty and wonder of nature, Bass passes on his own passion for wilderness to his readers, making them care about the nature he holds so dear.
Bass took an early interest in the natural world. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and earning his Bachelors of Science in geology from Utah State University, Bass spent much of his early life working as a petroleum geologist in the South and Southwest.
“It was like being in a war,” he said.
His mission was to search for the buried treasure — oil — and though it was cutthroat and perhaps seen as unethical to some, Bass, “wouldn’t trade [the experience] for the world.”
Though Bass was born and raised in the South, his oil stint made him yearn for the world out West. So Bass gave up oil and moved to Missoula, Montana, where he began to explore the Yaak Valley’s wilderness, both on foot and in his writing. Bass had never seen anything like the Yaak and he thought people should know about it.
But Bass soon realized that the Yaak wilderness was slowly disappearing. Heavy logging devastated entire forests. With no choice but to protect his adopted home, Bass decided to fight.
There had never been an environmental activist in Montana quite like Bass. The logging industry ruled the local culture; the treasuries were funded by how much timber they could cut; logging mills dictated the accounting system. No one had ever stood up to the logging authority until Bass.
“What the opposition needed was a smack in the mouth,” he said. “They were bullies and they never expected me to fight back.”
What Bass brought to Montana was the power of language and the power of the idea. He wrote fictional stories about the Yaak wilderness, its innate beauty and the unique unknown. Though he never specifically spoke about his activism in his stories, it demonstrated his love and advocacy of the wilderness. Writing stories was one form of environmental advocacy but for Bass, that was simply not enough.
After only a few years in Montana, Bass began the conservation campaign in local and state governments. Forming the Yaak Valley Forest Council, his first step was overcoming the locals’ distrust and fear; to the loggers of Montana, Bass was a threat to their industry and their economy, and they would do whatever it took to keep Bass out of power.
“To make real change, you must have a champion of the heart,” Bass said. “The legislation must be heart based.”
Bass threw his whole heart into breaking down the local logging culture and making the people of Montana see what their industry was doing to the precious wilderness.
In the final few minutes of his lecture, Bass compared his legislative efforts to hunting: “To get a good shot at the animal, you have to put in the miles, the hours, the bad weather — all those obstacles, just for one shot,” just like he gets only one shot for a bill that would permanently protect the last remaining roadless cores in Yaak Valley, which total nearly 180,000 acres.
Bass is still working towards this opportunity. His efforts have a come a long way in 20 years. There is now a conservation educator in Montana schools and the people are learning about how to protect their home at a young age.
Still, Bass said, “It’s a hard gig. You must navigate through the territory of despair.”
“Most environmental activists are in your face with their views or opinions, but Bass weaves his environmental advocacy into his stories in such a subtle way that you can’t not be persuaded,” said Tara Doyle ’11
“I found his personal story about the politics of environmental activism eye-opening and somewhat alarming,” said Assistant Professor of English & American Literatures Dan Brayton. “It’s interesting to see a writer wear two different hats — a creative hat and an advocacy hat — and wear them so well.”
(02/24/11 5:05am)
Game |9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors
Platform |Nintendo DS
Rating | Mature
For those of you who read my column, you may have noticed an unsettling trend: I have only reviewed sequels or new additions of long-standing franchises. This deeply bothered me, as someone who advocates strongly for the independent/small-developer-based gaming community. I plan to change that with my formal review of 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (or 999 for short.)
In my “Top Games of 2010” column I dubbed 999 as the best game of 2010. I still stand by that statement, and would like to add that it’s one of the best Nintendo DS games to be released. 999 tells the story of Junpei, a college student who finds himself on a sinking ship. After his escape from a locked room, he discovers eight other individuals (there’s the “9 persons” aspect) who have one thing in common: they are all wearing the same bizarre bracelet. Soon they discover they are a part of the “Nonary Game,” a “Saw”-style game in which the players must use logic and math to solve puzzles. Failure to follow the rules or if the nine hour time limit runs out results in a bomb that has been placed in their lower intestine exploding.
Some of the characters Junpei interacts with are June, his cute childhood friend, Snake, the blind, princely, levelheaded intellectual and Lotus, the token large-breasted woman. All of the characters have a specific number on their bracelets, and these numbers are used to find the digital root (a math theorem used in the game) that opens nine marked doors. Zero, the game’s mysterious antagonist, challenges the nine characters to find the door marked with a “9”in order to escape.
The gameplay itself is of a more classical point-and-click variety; you find yourself trapped in rooms and have to interact with the environment to solve puzzles to find the exit. These puzzles are fun and just difficult enough to keep the game challenging, but not frustrating enough that you need to go running to your laptop to look up a walkthrough.
The story is told through a lot of script and not much animation, but the sprites are very memorable as the dialogue fits each character’s personality perfectly. Honestly, the game is much more of a visual novel than anything else, so if you don’t like to read, you’re going to want to skip this one. However, I cannot remember the last time I played a game this well-written The game discusses subjects such as Chernobyl, the sinking of the Titanic and Ice-9, among various other crazy theories and historical events.
The game also has six different endings, so there is plenty of replay value. When players begin a new game, they can fast-forward through text they have already seen; decisions that have already been made by the player will be faded out so they don’t accidentally go down the same path again.
Of these six endings, only one of them is the “true” ending, and it is completely mind-blowing and unanticipated. It ties everything together, and then, just when you think the game is over, it throws yet another huge plot twist right before the credits roll.
999 is easily one of the best games on the market right now, and at a cool price of $35 (you can probably even get it cheaper used or online), there’s no reason you shouldn’t own a copy.
999 gets a perfect 10/10 and my highest recommendation.
(02/24/11 5:03am)
Journalist Eric Schlosser delivered an address titled “The Future of the Food Movement” and took questions from a capacity crowd at McCullough Social Space last Tuesday night, Feb. 15.
In addition to being the executive producer of There Will Be Blood and Food Inc. and producing two plays in London, Schlosser co-wrote the bestselling book Fast Food Nation. His talk culled material from the book, published in 2001 — specifically passages detailing the way in which the fast food industry has encouraged obesity, propagated food-borne illnesses, marketed to children with disastrous results and committed systematic offenses against animals and humans alike.
Since the two are similar in motives, actions and rationale, Schlosser began his speech by comparing the food movement to the modern day environmental movement — a familiar subject for most Middlebury students. As Schlosser moved deeper into his discussion of the food industry, however, he made the point that Americans’ lack of familiarity with food issues is part of the problem.
“It is the bedrock of our society,” Schlosser said, “yet our food system was radically transformed in an incredibly brief period of time without most Americans even knowing it.”
Schlosser said, “The massive transformation of food system began to occur literally 40 years ago as the fast food industry began to spread, and an entire new form of pollution entered our society and our bodies.
If the food industry has such a profound effect on American culture, why are we still in the dark? Because, according to Schlosser, food companies’ advertising campaigns are designed specifically to mislead us.
Schlosser focused on how the food industry’s advertising is targeted at children, showing that among children we see the two worst effects of fast food. In our nation, the poor children are severely obese, but the children of the wealthy and the upper middle class are developing eating disorders.
“Today in the United States we have a deeply, deeply unhealthy and perverse relationship to food,” Schlosser said. “It’s a society that tells us to be thin, but promotes food to make you fat.”
Eating habits begin very early, and so the fast food industries aggressively target young children. As evidence, Schlosser shared the fact that McDonalds is the world’s largest distributer of toys.
“Both McDonalds and Burger King have done promotions involving Teletubbies,” Schlosser said. “Teletubbies are PBS characters that are aimed at preverbal children.”
Obesity rates among American children have consistently increased — a trend portentous of increasing obesity among adults, since children who are obese by the age of 13, will most likely be obese for the rest of their life.
Similar trends have presented in health issues associated with obesity. Diabetes used to be extremely rare among children, but now, Schlosser said, one out of every three children born in 2000 will suffer from the disease.
Schlosser also emphasized the deplorable living conditions are raised in.
“Cattle, hogs and chickens are living creatures that have been turned essentially into industrial commodities,” said Schlosser. “Conformity and cheapness is applied to living beings. It’s amazing that anyone could treat intelligent living creatures this way. It’s out of a bad science-fiction movie! If you saw these places, particularly if you heard them and smelled them, you wouldn’t want to eat this food. So they have to hide it.”
Our food system may be flawed, but Schlosser sees in the flaws opportunities for change.
“If you want to solve the problems, you don’t have to be a saint,” said Schlosser. “Here’s what I think you do need to do — you have to become conscious. You can’t live in denial. And as a society, we all have to try and become more compassionate again, and acknowledge how we are all linked, the richest to the poorest.”
Social injustice, according to Schlosser, is one of the main issues that need to be addressed regarding the food industry, but it is often left out of the movement. The people who work at fast food restaurants typically earn minimum wage, and the food preparation processes are so mechanized the human beings are treated as if they are utterly disposable.
Schlosser brought the issue of social injustice particularly close to home. In Vermont, one out of every six people is on food stamps and one in every five children lives below the poverty line. The average income for a family of four is less than one year’s tuition at Middlebury College. But again, Schlosser saw hope amid the problems.
“There are four times as many people living in Queens as there are living in this entire state,” Schlosser said. “But that’s what can make [Vermont] useful as a social laboratory for the future. Things can be tried here, and when they work, they can be adapted elsewhere.”
Schlosser ended his speech quoting a Buddhist monk:
“Once there is seeing there must be acting. Otherwise, what’s the point of seeing?”
Schlosser helped his audience to see, and then he called on us to act, to make a difference about how our food industry works. Many Middlebury students attended the speech, and the consensus seemed to be that as a college we should focus more on the food movement.
“I thought his speech was good,” said Ashley Guzman ’13, “But still, there was a lot of shock value.”
“I wasn’t as interested in his environmental time line as his food time line,” said Olivia French ’14, “I liked the speech a lot though. I thought it was really applicable to your own life. You feel as if you can actually do something.”
“The school has such a strong environmental program,” said Danielle Gladstone ’13, “and I’m sure food comes up in many classes in enviro[mental science] as a whole. But I don’t think there’s anything really dedicated to food.”
Maybe Schlosser’s lecture was the first step toward a stronger focus on the food movement, and maybe we can take the necessary action to bring about reform. It’s our generation that needs to do the reforming — it’s the youth that can initiate social change. We can be the generation to stop ordering Big Macs and Double Whoppers.
(02/10/11 5:03am)
John Graham dreamed of building an organization that provided a variety of basic services to those in need, and he did indeed make his vision a reality. The John Graham Shelter Home located in Vergennes, Vt. and the non-profit group HOPE (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects), which is based in Middlebury, were the results of Graham’s work. Jeanne Montross, executive director of HOPE, works closely with her board of directors, whose members include Special Collections Librarian and College Archivist Bob Buckeye, Donor Relations Events Manager Andrea Solomon and Professor of Anthropology David Stoll.
Montross, a native of Salisbury, Vt., has been HOPE’s director for 10 years. Born and raised in New Jersey, she graduated from the University of Vermont (UVM) after majoring in psychology. She then worked in counseling at UVM and North Country Community College, and was part of a court diversion program in Middlebury. When HOPE moved to its new location, 282 Boardman St. at the John V. Craven Community Services Center, in 1999, Montross jumped on board and was quickly crowned director.
“Jeanne is a real go-getter and a huge asset to HOPE,” said Solomon, who serves as the chair of fundraising committees and organized the “Model Citizen” Fashion Show last November, which raised approximately $3,000 for HOPE. “She is a tremendous advocate for anyone in need and dives in at the ground level.”
The organization’s mission is to reduce the effects of poverty in Addison County by providing basic services to residents, including food aid, shelter and budget counseling. Montross also said HOPE seeks to educate individuals. Instead of simply giving families instant meals to prepare, for example, the organization urges people to select a recipe from the many HOPE provides and bring home fresh produce to cook wholesome, healthy dinners.
“We also want to beef up our gleaning program,” said Montross, who has worked with Corrine Almquist ’09 and Jessie Ebersole ’12 on this project. In 2009, the gleaning program donated 8,000 pounds of food to HOPE.
“Corinne brought truckloads of pumpkins to us this fall, which volunteers brought home and mashed up. People then came to the food bank and took the mashed pumpkins, as well as spices, and make pumpkin pies for the holidays.”
HOPE receives very little government funding; money comes from grants or is donated by local residents, businesses and other organizations, like United Ways. Since it is not a government program, the organization works to provide a variety of services, regardless of whether it has a specific program. For instance, if someone needs a new well pump, HOPE will determine if the project is viable and, if deemed necessary, will attempt to find the funding to install the pump.
“We try not to say ‘no’ to anything, but we need to use the community money carefully,” said Montross.
The John V. Craven Community Services Center also is home to the Vermont Adult Learning Center, which offers computer classes, as well as daycare services. The Addison County Transit Resources (ACTR) shuttles drive to and from the center throughout the day, so individuals have easy access to the facilities.
“I believe that we are part of a community and need to be responsible for one another,” said Buckeye, who has been chair of the board of directors for the last 11 years. “There are those who have had unexpected difficulties and setbacks. There are those who have had little chance from the beginning. We do not ignore them, walk over them on the street as it were.”
It is clear that HOPE’s services help many. Over 500 people come to HOPE’s food shelf each month. Families are allowed to bring home enough food for three meals for three days for each member of their household. In 2009, the food bank dished out enough for 43,000 meals to impoverished individuals. People must fill out an application that analyzes both their income and their expenses to determine if they qualify to receive food from the emergency food shelf. Local community members, as well as nearby supermarkets, like Hannaford’s, donate much of the food. Montross was proud of the College’s December food drive, too.
The executive director has looked into buying food wholesale, but fears it is too expensive, as she must buy a minimum of $5,000 worth of goods. In the past, volunteers would pack bags and bring them to needy families, but HOPE determined this was an inefficient system, so people now come to select their own food, all of which is carefully weighed by HOPE.
The organization has a walk-in freezer and cooler to keep food fresh. All goods must be organized and packaged in the food warehouse. Student help is needed in the fall especially when the produce from the gleaning program is delivered. The food shelf accepts donated food year round, and juices, canned fruits, vegetables, soup and dairy products are particlarly needed.
“It feels like HOPE really reaches to people that need help,” said Solomon, who often volunteers with her three children at the food shelf, as she wants them to see they can make a difference by giving back locally. “There is a strong pull towards helping people in our community and to make a big difference right here. It is not AIDS research, but that does not necessarily feed local needs.”
Stoll, who got involved with the organization because Buckeye mentioned that HOPE wanted to start working with local Mexican dairy farmers, could not agree more. A fluent Spanish speaker, Stoll was the perfect choice to join the board to help with this particular project. Happily though, Stoll said he has done little with this specific program because most of these farmers are currently employed.
“Who is going to take care of people who are sick and destitute?” said Stoll. “HOPE is interesting because it straddles the boundary between public and private.”
The organization also partners with its thrift store, RetroWorks, which is an important source of revenue for the non-profit. Last year, the shop earned $230,248. Everything from clothing to 90-cent cups to woven placemats is donated and sold. Montross is especially excited fabout the upcoming vinyl record sale at RetroWorks, which will be held later this spring.
Extra clothes that are not sold are sent to a warehouse in Canada, where, along with leftover shoes, stuffed animals and purses, they are either sold to thrift stores or sent to developing countries.
“That way everything is kept out of the landfill,” said Montross.
RetroWorks, which is open to the public, welcomes customers Monday through Saturday, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Donations are always welcome. Neat Repeats, a store in Middlebury, partners with HOPE and donates much of its inventory to the store. Call (802) 388-3608 (ext. 24) for more information.
Plans are currently underway for fundraisers, similar to the fashion show held in November, to raise money for HOPE. Montross also hopes to start winter-ready automobile programs in which individuals donate snow tires and anti-freeze to those who cannot afford these items. Additionally, she wants to organize home repairs. In the past, mission groups have helped with such projects, but Montross said they proved to be too large a strain on resources and was difficult to staff. Instead, she seeks to train local volunteers to make the visits.
Montross also aims to expand HOPE’s reach across Addison County and to lend aid to towns over the mountain, like Hancock, Starksboro and Grandville.
In addition to its food services, HOPE collaborates with other organizations, like the Counseling Services of Addison County and the Addison County Community Trust, on housing projects. Since 1985, HOPE has built 200 homes in Addison County. The Hill House, located on Route 7, was refurbished in 2008 and is now a safe haven for those who were homeless. People can stay at the house for up to two years. While HOPE officially owns the facility, the Counseling Services staff and run the building.
Visit http://www.hope-vt.org or call HOPE at (802) 388-3608 to learn about ways to volunteer. Solomon also said students should talk to Tiffany Sargent, the Director of the ACE Office, if they want to get involved with HOPE.
“I measure myself against how the disadvantaged measure me,” said Buckeye. “There are people who need assistance. We provide it as best we can.”
Last year, 47 families received help from HOPE and were able to pay for their rent and mortgage, while another 80 families were offered money for utilizes. In addition, 256 gasoline vouchers were issued, enabling people to get to work, to school or to a doctor’s appointment.
In HOPE’s pamphlet, Montross says, “HOPE does not operate alone — it is part of a caring community in which many people take seriously the responsibility of caring for others …We do the front line work, but you are behind us, making it all possible. Thank you.”
HOPE's Homepage
(02/10/11 4:59am)
A remarkable number of metaphors for an improved understanding of the world involve physical expansion. Whether an opening of eyes, broadening of horizons, or widening of perspective, it seems that figurative growth is an integral part of a worthwhile experience. Through their Februrary Middlebury Alternative break (MAlt) endeavors, Middlebury students were able to burst the bubble, returning not only with bigger social circles but also a greater grasp on how they can improve their communities.
Oakland, CA
Even with uncertain expectations of the MAlt trip to Oakland, California students were never lacking enthusiasm.
“I really wanted a new experience where I could meet new people and do something together that we’re all interested in,” Ashley Guzman ’13 wrote in an e-mail of her decision to apply. The timing of the trip — just four weeks after a break she spent at home — made it ideal for a new destination. Ramin Pena ’13, who considered multiple MAlt trips, was drawn to this one for the service aspect.
In addition to fundraising, the group of 12 prepared for the trip by meeting weekly in order to learn about the Oakland area and the organizations with which they would be working. These organizations, based in Oakland and San Francisco, spanned a variety of causes, allowing the students to learn about and participate in what Pena called “efforts to help the environment — not nature,” he clarified, “but people who live in it.”
A number of these efforts were focused on empowering people to succeed in the business world. For example, the students sat in on an introductory course at CEO Women — an organization dedicated to helping women start up or expand small businesses. By providing training and grants, then following up periodically on participants’ progress, it aims to guide and foster their success. The students also learned about Women’s Initiative, which follows a similar model.
The group saw a success story in another organization: Wardrobe for Opportunity, whose executive director was a CEO Women graduate. The premise: provide women with the support and professional wardrobe required to make it in the business world.
“They may have the skills, but they may not have the clothes, and that makes all the difference,” Pena said.
The students helped to prepare the clothing for donations with tasks such as steaming suits and organizing shoes.
One Pacific coast bank provided them with background on how banks work; specifically, how this one, with a positive impact on the community at the core of its mission, differed from many larger corporate banks.
“They emphasized the importance of keeping capital within Oakland in order to lift people out of poverty and be able to offer small business loans and investments,” Guzman wrote.
A tour of San Francisco was also an eye-opening experience. Pena described a “sub-community” of the homeless population in the city defined by complacency.
“There are people who choose to be homeless,” he said, rendering shelter work a bit more complicated. “We’re just supporting their logic that they don’t have to work.”
For the most part, however, the students found their volunteer work at Youth Engagement Advocacy and Housing (YEAH!) to be worthwhile and rewarding.
“That was the best,” Guzman wrote, “because we really got to interact with people our age who are very much like all of us, but in less fortunate circumstances.”
The group’s duties included cooking and serving food and preparing supplies to be donated. They also learned about empowerment efforts through agriculture. The People’s Grocery in Oakland allows locals to grow and pick their own food near the once-luxurious California Hotel, now a haven for squatters.
In addition to improving the state of the surrounding area, according to Guzman, the farm’s long-term goal includes “promoting environmental and racial justice in West Oakland.” As part of their tour, the students learned of the historical context of injustice that continues to hinder these efforts. They were able to do some gardening of their own with Save The Bay, an environmental organization, planting flowers along the shoreline in San Francisco.
Residents can also obtain produce through the Alameda County Food Bank, where the students helped to bag three tons of oranges in a day (in fact, the first day that the facility was open to volunteers). They were also given a tour of the Bank, which feeds about 49,000 people in a week and works to support local producers in order to provide the freshest food possible.
The group members bonded quickly,, as evidenced by their reunion after the first day of working in smaller groups.
“We literally ran into each other’s arms because we were so happy to see each other,” Guzman wrote. Pena, who knew most members of his group before the trip began, agreed: “everyone got really close by the end,” he said.
If the “withdrawal” that Guzman felt during the first week back on campus is any indication, the friendships are likely to last.
Both Guzman and Pena, New York natives, felt that they had gained perspective on urban social stratification and its implications. During their time in Berkeley, where they were housed, Pena was taken aback by the contrast between students at the University of California and the city’s substantial homeless population.
“It was kind of crazy to see students okay with it,” he said. “I don’t know how you deal with that.”
Still, he was inspired and comforted by the generosity he witnessed.
“It definitely revived my faith in humanity,” he said. “I know that there are people who will sacrifice living lavishly to help people get out of the slums.”
Guzman was impressed by the initiative of the organizations’ beneficiaries even before they received any assistance. The catch with some of these programs, the students realized, is the need for some sort of prerequisite knowledge and often a referral. With regard to Wardrobe for Opportunity, for example, “You can’t get the clothes if you don’t have the skills,” Pena said.
While this type of system necessarily limits the number of people who can receive assistance at a given time —“They may not always be perfect, but they do what they do as much as possible,” Pena said of the service organizations — it meant that the students were meeting trainees who had already managed to stand out within their communities.
“I was able to see firsthand what it means to be from another country and not know English but be so passionate about a business idea that you are willing to work as hard as possible to achieve those goals,” Guzman wrote. Despite the organizations’ limitations, it seems that helping to create a network driven by such values is a worthwhile step toward a culture of social mobility.
Simply put: “If you help people, they help others,” Pena said.
The students move forward now with a new outlook on daily life. “I learned to appreciate the things that I have, and my circumstances,” Guzman wrote, “plus I made 11 new ‘besties’ who I’ll love forever and ever.”
Pensacola, FL
When it comes to this past year’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Lisa Luna ’13 decided to take a hands-on approach. Thus, the concept of MAlt Pensacola was born.
“Emma Loizeaux and I decided to lead a MAlt trip to Pensacola [Florida] because we felt that the environmental effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill needed to be addressed and that it would be good to get Middlebury students down to the Gulf Coast to work on restoration,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Students like Janet Bering ’13 were eager to jump on board. “I thought it would be a great opportunity to apply concepts I’ve learned in the classroom as [an Environmental Studies and Biology] major, as well as help a damaged community,” she wrote in an e-mail.
The group began planning well before winter term, meeting regularly to discuss fundraising and learning about the problems facing their destination. The challenge of fundraising was partially alleviated by the Middlebury Environmental Council, which provided the group with a grant covering a substantial part of the costs.
As Luna admitted, the name of the trip “is a little misleading, since [they] did very little work in Pensacola itself.” In fact, the group stayed just east of Pensacola and worked in a variety of locations in northwestern Florida.
With the help of Community Collaborations International, an organization that directs volunteers to existing endeavors that need their help and match their interests, the students connected with the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance (CBA), the Muscogee Nation of Florida, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
“Most of our work actually ended up being in the realm of general ecosystem restoration in the area, rather than restoration explicitly related to the spill,” Luna wrote.
For example, oil did not actually infiltrate Choctawhatchee Bay, yet the group worked on restoration efforts there as part of a larger-scheme effort to improve the region.
“Everything in the region’s ecosystem is interconnected. The long-term impacts of the spill have yet to become apparent, so it’s important to support the health of the entire ecosystem, and I think that we helped with that,” explained Luna.
The group’s work with the Muscogee Nation of Florida (a Native American tribe working toward federal recognition) was the most directly focused on the region’s residents. The first day of the trip was dedicated to helping at a Muscogee food bank in Bruce, cleaning sheds to be used for storage. As Bering pointed out, the spill had a serious negative impact on the local economy, rendering the food bank even more critical. While in Bruce, they also volunteered an afternoon at an after-school program for “at-risk kids” organized by the United Methodist Church.
Later in the week, the students worked with the CBA on an invaluable undertaking for the bay: constructing oyster reefs.
“Oyster reefs are an incredibly important part of the bay ecosystem,” Luna wrote, “because they provide habitat for a variety of other species, help to control shoreline erosion, and filter water, which helps maintain the necessary water quality for other plants and animals.”
The reefs were one type of habitat that suffered tremendously as a result of the oil spill. In accordance with the CBA’s usual technique, students created artificial reefs out of mesh bags full of fossilized oysters that they had filled themselves, shoveling 30 tons over one and a half days.
Next, they met with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Eglin Airforce Base, where they learned about the detrimental effects of damming on endangered species.
“The whole ecosystem in the area needs work,” Luna wrote, “and building a new stream, while helpful, won’t solve the habitat problem for … any of the species that depend on the area.”
Their efforts involved planting, which can “help jumpstart ecosystem recovery.” The work took place both near the pond created by the dam and in a DEP greenhouse. This situation exemplified the delicate, complex, intertwined nature of the various systems in the region, and how easily the balance can be upset.
The group dynamic proved both lighthearted and indicative of serious commitment to the projects at hand.
“We were pretty silly most of the trip and got along really well,” Bering wrote. “One of the most fun aspects of the trip was the other people I was with, and I really hope we all stay in touch.”
Luna agreed: “Our group was totally awesome.” More specifically, “It was fun to be working outside with a group, learning a lot from local experts, and then sitting down and talking about what we had experienced. We all learned a lot about each other, or at least I did, and it was great to spend time with people that I otherwise may not have met.”
Both students valued the chance to get their hands dirty, using their theoretical knowledge on a real and therefore much more complex level. Ironically, what initially drew Bering to the trip also proved most challenging. “I learned the difficulties of applying conservation in the field,” she wrote.
One measure of a rewarding experience is that, nearly a week later, students are still grappling with the magnitude of the reward.
“I got a ton out of the trip,” Luna wrote. “I could go on for days, but I’m still sort of trying to figure all of that out.”
